sentex:Sad when the author doesn't know the difference between a bullet and a cartridge.

No kidding, I came here to read about scrounging lead wheel weights & having a smelter out in the garage & this dufus is talking about the entire package. I really was interested in hearing about how he could jacket his bullets or if not then what he was doing about lead fouling.

/much of the ammo 'shortage' is due to the decade long war that we've been stuck in.//ammo companies tend to first fill the orders from the guys who give them permits to operate & also buy by the trainload///any ammo/component manufacturer who hasn't been running 3 shifts for the past few years is missing out on some serious money

Is NPR really that clueless? I've known people reloading for the last 25 years in order to save money on target shooting ammo. I remember reloading shot gun shells in college close to 40 years ago (ok. I'm old dammit) in order to save money for the skeet and trap shooting classes I was taking.

// Note: Never put 2x the powder in one shotgun shell and 2x the shot in the other.

No, they're not. This is an article written by the NRA to tell its members that ammunition is super expense and hard to find due to manufacturing shortages, and its obvious intent is to get more people to stock up, since ammo is going to be so hard to find. Did you get to the part of the article where a guy that owns an ammo factory claimed he has so many customers his phones got overloaded and crashed? Motherf*cker, please.

Reloading is old news, and always was a cheap way to shoot a lot, provided you had the time on your hands to piss away carefully measuring things and pulling a lever. I don't know why components wouldn't be scarce too, if fully assembled factory ammo is hard to come by. It is, after all, made of the exact same parts. I haven't even had time to go shooting, lately, so I have no idea what the situation really is at present.

No, they're not. This is an article written by the NRA to tell its members that ammunition is super expense and hard to find due to manufacturing shortages, and its obvious intent is to get more people to stock up, since ammo is going to be so hard to find. Did you get to the part of the article where a guy that owns an ammo factory claimed he has so many customers his phones got overloaded and crashed? Motherf*cker, please.

Um, my bad. I read that as NRA. The rest of my post stands, but now I am also wondering how NPR could get suckered by the guys they talked to for this article.

I'm getting a kick out of all these replies. There is a perfect storm of commodity panic (brass, lead and copper being used in emerging markets in China and India), along with ammo panic due to fear mongering from outside industry pundits, some panic due to knee jerk laws like the news ones here in Colorado and a host of other factors. People are really really scared.

And really really dumb.

I believe the story of the guys at Dillon Precision having to purchase phones, its been a madhouse since SHOT Show in January.

CujoQuarrel:Is NPR really that clueless? I've known people reloading for the last 25 years in order to save money on target shooting ammo. I remember reloading shot gun shells in college close to 40 years ago (ok. I'm old dammit) in order to save money for the skeet and trap shooting classes I was taking.

// Note: Never put 2x the powder in one shotgun shell and 2x the shot in the other.

I hope you caught your mistake, the double charge could blow your weapons action to pieces

I'm getting a kick out of all these replies. There is a perfect storm of commodity panic (brass, lead and copper being used in emerging markets in China and India), along with ammo panic due to fear mongering from outside industry pundits, some panic due to knee jerk laws like the news ones here in Colorado and a host of other factors. People are really really scared.

And really really dumb.

I believe the story of the guys at Dillon Precision having to purchase phones, its been a madhouse since SHOT Show in January.

No, they're not. This is an article written by the NRA to tell its members that ammunition is super expense and hard to find due to manufacturing shortages, and its obvious intent is to get more people to stock up, since ammo is going to be so hard to find. Did you get to the part of the article where a guy that owns an ammo factory claimed he has so many customers his phones got overloaded and crashed? Motherf*cker, please.

Um, my bad. I read that as NRA. The rest of my post stands, but now I am also wondering how NPR could get suckered by the guys they talked to for this article.

Yeah, reloading is not the same as "making your own bullets." Although more people are getting into cast lead bullets. . . We clean our local tireshops out of used wheel weights. Next goal: making blackpowder. Then I won't be paying the military industrial complex for all of those .50 and .54 caliber swaged lead balls, flints, and black powder. . .

/I do also reload modern rifle ammo//I recently found some 165 gr. .30 caliber game king bullets at my local walmart after trying to find them everywhere. . . I squealed like a little girl.

HotWingAgenda:This is an article written by the NRA to tell its members that ammunition is super expense and hard to find due to manufacturing shortages, and its obvious intent is to get more people to stock up, since ammo is going to be so hard to find. Did you get to the part of the article where a guy that owns an ammo factory claimed he has so many customers his phones got overloaded and crashed? Motherf*cker, please.

That guy was from Dillon, a company that makes the machines called reloading presses that one uses to assemble the components. They are not an ammo company.

Those of us who shoot are well aware of the availability of ammo and reloading components. There are people who compete in sporting competitions and leagues for recreation that go through a fair bit of ammo for practice, and we don't need the NRA or NPR to get the word out on the shortages. You probably run in to us around your neighborhood.

Even though they downplayed it in the media, there is a great olympic champion you should be aware of. Google Kim Rhode sometime.

forgotmydamnusername:I don't know why components wouldn't be scarce too, if fully assembled factory ammo is hard to come by. It is, after all, made of the exact same parts.

They have been also. Everything is starting to loosen up though. The manufacturers have ramped up everywhere I think. I bought shotgun shells made in France a while back, and Federal has been importing AR ammo from Israel and putting their name on it.

Triptolemus:Yeah, reloading is not the same as "making your own bullets." Although more people are getting into cast lead bullets. . . We clean our local tireshops out of used wheel weights. Next goal: making blackpowder. Then I won't be paying the military industrial complex for all of those .50 and .54 caliber swaged lead balls, flints, and black powder. . .

/I do also reload modern rifle ammo//I recently found some 165 gr. .30 caliber game king bullets at my local walmart after trying to find them everywhere. . . I squealed like a little girl.

I tried my hand at casting bullets, but it was just too much work. And it was ridiculously hard to find a shop that would let me buy their wheel weights. All the corporate places have recycling programs and they can't divert the metal. I eventually found an independent shop where I could buy them... for $1/lb.

I've still got about 800 230gr .452" bullets that need to be sized and lubed, and about 30lbs in ingots. Things will have to get really desperate before I tackle that. At least the ingots are useful for scuba diving.

Fish in a Barrel:I tried my hand at casting bullets, but it was just too much work. And it was ridiculously hard to find a shop that would let me buy their wheel weights. All the corporate places have recycling programs and they can't divert the metal. I eventually found an independent shop where I could buy them... for $1/lb.

I've still got about 800 230gr .452" bullets that need to be sized and lubed, and about 30lbs in ingots. Things will have to get really desperate before I tackle that. At least the ingots are useful for scuba diving.

Yeah, you have to be dedicated, but my friend and I knock them out in large batches, and we're in a small town with several tire shops that are happy to have us dispose of their old weights. Not sure I'd pay for them though- next time you have to buy, remind them that disposal costs money and you'll take them for free. . . .Anyway, yeah, that's quite a bit of lead- I think you have enough to last you a while. And you have some great toxic door stops and paper weights in the meantime. . .

I need a couple of 5,000 bricks of small and large pistol primers. The panic buying can't stop soon enough. It has been going on for like 4 years now. when you shoot 10-15,000 rounds a year this shortage is really frustrating.

One would think that there is a market saturation point and we passed it long ago. That or like the article says...it is a really big bubble about to pop.

I remember in the early 90's before AWB it did the same, and the prices DID come down. Same thing in the mid 80's machine gun grandfathering.

knbwhite:HotWingAgenda: This is an article written by the NRA to tell its members that ammunition is super expense and hard to find due to manufacturing shortages, and its obvious intent is to get more people to stock up, since ammo is going to be so hard to find. Did you get to the part of the article where a guy that owns an ammo factory claimed he has so many customers his phones got overloaded and crashed? Motherf*cker, please.

That guy was from Dillon, a company that makes the machines called reloading presses that one uses to assemble the components. They are not an ammo company.

Those of us who shoot are well aware of the availability of ammo and reloading components. There are people who compete in sporting competitions and leagues for recreation that go through a fair bit of ammo for practice, and we don't need the NRA or NPR to get the word out on the shortages. You probably run in to us around your neighborhood.

Even though they downplayed it in the media, there is a great olympic champion you should be aware of. Google Kim Rhode sometime.

Bingo... I burn through around 3k rounds per month just staying in shape (mostly .45 ACP, 5.56 and 7.62X51). Primers and certain types of powder are becoming really hard to find.

/Primers are starting to come back on line//Powder doesn't seem to be much better yet.

CujoQuarrel:Is NPR really that clueless? I've known people reloading for the last 25 years in order to save money on target shooting ammo. I remember reloading shot gun shells in college close to 40 years ago (ok. I'm old dammit) in order to save money for the skeet and trap shooting classes I was taking.

// Note: Never put 2x the powder in one shotgun shell and 2x the shot in the other.

I only skimmed the article, but I don't see NPR as being clueless. Not all of us are gun nuts. I've been aware that people pack their own ammo for a while. I'm tying hard not to look stupid and use the wrong lingo, but ammo is what guns fire, is it not?

NPR is one of the better news sources out there. Some of the cable "news" services like to spend a lot of time repeating people's tweets, FFS.

I really miss the old days when I got a paper thrown in my yard every evening and I'd just sit down and read it. Sure, I only got 1 newspaper delivered each day so it may have been biased, but a lot less of it was opinion and what was opinion was relegated to a few pages of editorials and letters to the editor.

The actual news portion reported what happened, when it happened and how it happened.

There's a reloading bench in the next room. I don't see the big deal. Most of the factory ammo has inconsistent quality leading to less delicious game. Therefore, we load all ammunition for a particular gun to our preferences.

Sagus (my tablet won't. quote)No not trying man. just got tired of paying someone else to do what I had the ability to do. I've tried moly coated lead bullets in the past without luck, now I'm giving some Sierra Xtreme plated 124gr bullets a try. EIP, I'll keep you posted if you remind me. Take care.

Well, they do get to re-use spent casings, but yeah, no one makes their own primers so far as I know.

I also don't understand why survivalists are into re-loading...come the collapse, you have no more primers or modern powder. Black powder is only easy to make when you have ready access to sulfur and potassium nitrate. In any scenario where you can't buy powder, you won't be able to buy chemicals used to make powder either. Does anyone take it as far as trying to process nitrate out of guano on their own?

But let's not talk about the the fine, upstanding men who have undertaken field tests of various firearms. Those who have demonstrated their ease of use, magazine capacity, quick reloading time, and grievous bodily harm.

But let's not talk about the the fine, upstanding men who have undertaken field tests of various firearms. Those who have demonstrated their ease of use, magazine capacity, quick reloading time, and grievous bodily harm.

For quality control reasons alone, I don't see the point in making your own. It isn't about how much you care. It's about metrology. It's about geometry differences that the naked eye misses and basic tools aren't designed to measure. If you make your own, then you probably love your guns too much to use it on them.